


My Name's Evie, What's Yours?

by Heart_Seoul_Soshi



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-18 01:34:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13089648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heart_Seoul_Soshi/pseuds/Heart_Seoul_Soshi
Summary: The brief first adventures of a five year old named Mal and a five year old named Evie





	My Name's Evie, What's Yours?

**Author's Note:**

> from anonymous requests on tumblr

Evie had been told time and time again not to wander. But, idly. Sort of in passing conversation. As in, her mother staring fixated into a mirror and rather boredly uttering a disinterested "Don't wander off, Evie." But an island full of danger meant nothing to a curious little girl (and meant nothing to her mother, really, who only uttered her warnings as a formality), so finally, wander Evie did. Right out the castle doors and onto the wild streets of The Isle. A little tyke such as herself was easy prey to the island's villainous denizens, but through some will of luck, she passed by relatively unseen, wide eyes taking in all the sights of The Isle's crowded downtown.

  
She was too young and still too innocent to see the island prison for what it really was—to her, all she saw was adventure. The clotheslines up above waving tattered cloaks were really rickety rope bridges, suspended perilously high above a misty, never-ending chasm. The sulfurous smoke belching from chimneys and pipes really came from the nose of a dragon, fierce and angry. And the grimy brick wall at the end of an alleyway was really a mountain, and the trashcan was her stepping stone, which she clambered on top of to ignore her mother's spiels on what a princess should and shouldn't do and to victoriously reach the top of that mountain.  
  
But in her elated bouncing at the stony top of the wall, her exuberance left little room for her balance and she toppled, falling over the opposite side of the wall and expecting a rough landing onto the ground below but instead having her fall broken by something much softer, something not at all thrilled to be used as a cushion.  
  
"Hey!!" the young girl snapped, shoving Evie off of her.  
  
Evie went tumbling from her improvised cushion and onto the ground, sitting up and seeing the girl across from her righting herself and pushing back thick waves of purple from her face. A little girl just her age, a sight previously unseen to Evie in her five years of staying relatively chained to her mother's side in the castle, never being allowed to venture far because a princess simply didn't need to venture.  
  
"...Hey!!" she said back with an entirely different intonation as she bounded excitedly to her feet.  
  
The other girl got to her feet as well, brushing herself off and fixing Evie with a nasty scowl.  
  
"What the heck do you think you're doing?!" she demanded.  
  
"Falling," Evie giggled.  
  
"Well do it somewhere else!" the girl with purple hair said, brushing dirt off and walking away.  
  
Evie, whose only ever playmate in that big empty castle was her own reflection in the mirror, wasn't about to let this one get away that easily.  
  
"Hey, wait up," she followed after the girl, falling into step behind her as she trudged through what appeared to be a cemetery.  
  
"For what?" the girl grumbled over her shoulder.  
  
"For me. My name's Evie. What's yours?"  
  
"Mal, not that it matters to you."  
  
Evie moved beside Mal, the two of them weaving in and around cracked, dusty tombstones.  
  
"Does so! I've never gotten to play with another kid before. I've never gotten to play with  _anyone_ before."  
  
Mal's little nose wrinkled.  
  
"Play?" she repeated with another scowl, turning towards Evie. "We're not gonna  _play._  Don't you know who I am?"  
  
"You're Mal."  
  
"Mal. Mal of The Isle. Daughter of  _Maleficent_."  
  
Evie just smiled pleasantly at her, unperturbed by the name drop. Mal sighed.  
  
"Oh boy, you're hopeless," she muttered.  
  
She hurdled herself over a tombstone and just kept on walking, done caring whether Evie was following her or not. Evie tried to mimic her and vault over the stone, but lacked Mal's apparent agility and ended up flopping out halfway. Mal turned around when she heard the dull "thud", and that's where she caught sight of Evie, flat on her back and laughing at her own mishap.  
  
" _Hopeless_ ," Mal repeated.  
  
Evie was not one to be deterred on her great big adventure, and scrambled back to her feet.  
  
"What do you like to play?" Evie asked.  
  
"I don't play, I plot."  
  
"What's that like?"  
  
Mal stopped in her tracks. And the lightbulb went off above her head.  
  
"...How about I show you?" she said wickedly.  
  
Evie's face lit up excitedly, and she followed right along as Mal led the way.  
  
They made it to the bustling square, full of peddlers and shady scammers always looking to make some fast cash. Mal, tiny as she was, handily shoved her way through the crowds, cutting a path like a dagger. They didn't stop at the square, but moved right through and into an alleyway, where Mal stopped and pointed at a rickety metal stairway leading up and up along the side of a brick building.  
  
"Don't swing on a string, it's much too frail, the best kind of swing is a lion's tail," she recited with a scheming smirk, eyeing Evie.  
  
Evie looked up in awe at the scraggly lion stretched out easily on the lowest landing of the stairwell, his tail hanging lazily over the edge.  
  
"Wow," Evie breathed, amazed by the sight of a real live lion.  
  
"His name's Scar," Mal told her. "He just  _loves_  little kids."  
  
"Really?"  
  
Mal gave Evie a little push towards the stairwell and the dangling tail.  
  
"Absolutely! Kids hang around him all the time, and what he  _really_  loves is when they give his tail a good swing."  
  
"Doesn't that hurt him?" Evie frowned, not noticing Mal slowly inching away behind her.  
  
"If it did, would he leave his tail just hanging there where anyone could grab at it? Look, you said you wanted to play, and this is how I play. Except I call it 'plotting' because that's way cooler. Now go on."  
  
She gave Evie one final shove towards the lion and retreated some more, backing up inch by inch until she finally disappeared around the corner and down the adjacent alleyway. She knew she should have booked it, but with a barely-contained snicker she just couldn't resist pressing herself flat against the alley wall and listening, listening until she heard that telltale yowl of surprise bellowing through the air. Her own laughter was the next sound that filled her ears, uncontrolled and so,  _so_  amused. But her laughter in turn led the frantic pair of racing footsteps right to her.  
  
"Mal! Mal! I don't think he liked that!!" Evie cried out, suddenly rounding the corner.  
  
She ran so fast that she couldn't stop herself and bowled right into Mal, tumbling the both of them over onto the ground and knocking the wind out of them.  
  
"...We've got to quit meeting like this," Mal groaned, once again pushing Evie off of her.  
  
Mal certainly was especially attuned to certain noises at the moment. The angry yell of a lion. The skittering of Evie's feet. The dragging shriek of gnarled claws skidding to a stop on the pavement.  
  
"...Mal. I should have known."  
  
Mal gasped at the smooth sound of his voice, both she and Evie jumping to their feet.  
  
Scar blocked the front of the alley, leering at the girls with his yellowed eyes.  
  
"Quite clever, trying to get your little playmate to take the fall," he mused. "...But not clever enough."  
  
Scar had only a split second to tense his muscles and prepare to leap, and Mal's reflexes reacted in the same amount of time. It took her only a split second to snatch a rock up from the ground and hurl it at Scar, knocking him right on the head.  
  
"Run!" Mal yelled.  
  
She and Evie bolted past the dazed lion and back out onto the street, not even stopping to see how far he was behind them. No one paid much attention to the fact that two children were on the run from a sadistic lion, such was the nature of The Isle, so Mal and Evie were on their own as Scar's roars resounded through the street.  
  
"Go up!" Mal pointed Evie to a stack of crates and the shop awning just above them.  
  
Evie got the hint, climbing the crates to scramble onto the awning with Mal right behind her. Scar was undeterred, making a running jump. His claws snagged the already tattered cloth of the awning, tearing a great gash down the middle that almost sent Mal tumbling down into his waiting jaws until Evie caught her around the middle and hoisted her back up.  
  
"Not so fast, Mal!" Scar snarled, readying to charge again.  
  
This time it was Evie who thought fast, grabbing Mal's hand and toting her along to keep her balance as they made a daring jump to an adjacent awning on the building next to them. Scar didn't react in time, and his second leap at the now-empty awning got his claws stuck and snared in the material. Evie and Mal, not sparing a second, rolled off the awning and back onto the ground, where they took off running once more. They didn't stop until they had taken several twists and turns, throwing Scar off their trail and ending up back in the cemetery, taking cover behind a mausoleum and catching their breath.  
  
"...Did we lose him?" Evie panted, risking a peek around the edge of the mausoleum.  
  
"...Scar doesn't like to do his own dirty work. I'm sure he's already given up," Mal told her.  
  
"Whew..." Evie breathed in relief.  
  
To Mal's incredible amazement, as soon as she had her strength back, the little girl beside her started to laugh.  
  
"Did you see the size of those teeth??" Evie giggled. "Can you believe we got chased by an  _actual_ lion? By Scar?? Whoa! That was so much fun!"  
  
"You're so weird," Mal grumbled.  
  
"We made a good team," Evie went on excitedly, scooting closer to Mal. "You were so brave, M."  
  
Mal blinked dumbly at her for a second or two, unsure what this girl's deal was.  
  
"You were brave too...E."  
  
Evie smiled at her, a dazzling, radiant thing.  
  
"So what do you want to play—I mean, plot next?" Evie asked eagerly.  
  
"THERE you are, what are you doing in a disgusting little hole like this?"  
  
Evie froze for only a moment before spinning around.  
  
"Mommy??"  
  
The Evil Queen trudged through the graveyard like she was walking through toxic sludge, holding her robes up off the ground and wearing the most revolted of expressions.  
  
"And what are you doing there in the grass? Getting covered in  _dirt?_ Up!"  
  
Evie leapt to her feet like she was a puppet on a string. Mal followed, slowly rising. That's when the Evil Queen saw her, wrinkling her nose like she'd caught a whiff of something nasty.  
  
"Ugh, the commoners," she sneered, recognizing the daughter of Maleficent. "Do you see what happens when you wander, Evie? Come here, now."  
  
Evie cast a saddened glance over her shoulder at Mal, and was admittedly a little surprised to see Mal casting one back at her. Nevertheless, she obeyed, leaving Mal's side to stand at her mother's. The Evil Queen had her by the arm and was tugging her along before Evie even had the chance to whisper or wave any sort of "goodbye", and then just like that, Mal was gone.

* * *

 

This was what she got for wandering, she supposed. For her "un-royal" ways. Locked up in her room and not even permitted to roam the halls of the castle. And she supposed it gave her mother a few days of peace and quiet, a few days to sit in front of the mirror and admire herself without Evie and her incessant clamoring for attention. 

  
She had little to do now but stay up in her room with her sketchbook and her dulled, broken colored pencils. Not even a whole set, just a handful of pencils scavenged here and there from various other discarded sets as a present for her past birthday. Evie didn't have many colors to choose from, but she was thankful she at least had purple. The perfect shade of purple to finish off all the doodles she'd done of Mal over the last couple days. She'd stopped noticing when night fell, so on this particular evening, only the slow, somewhat steady sound of rapping at her balcony window got her to tear her attention away from her drawings long enough to see the darkness outside.  
  
More rapping sounds, and Evie curiously hopped down from her chair and crossed the bedroom, having to stand on her toes to unlock the French doors and step out onto her balcony. She looked over the railing and down at the ground below, eyes needing a moment to adjust to the darkness.  
  
"...Mal!" she gasped.  
  
And there was Mal with a handful of little rocks in her palm, tossing them away into the bushes now that she'd gotten Evie's attention.  
  
"Wanna play?" Mal called up to her.  
  
Evie was so excited to see her, so excited that she'd been found...but it was late, and she was locked in her bedroom.  
  
"...I can't," her voice was so small that she was sure Mal couldn't and didn't hear her.  
  
But whether she couldn't or didn't, Mal read the expression on Evie's face well enough to not need words.  
  
"Catch," she said simply, picking up a long coil of rope and swinging one end.  
  
It took her several tries, and she knocked herself over a couple of times with the force of her own throws, but eventually she tossed the rope just right, landing the one end at Evie's feet.  
  
"Tie it around the railing," Mal called out, pointing at the balcony.  
  
Evie did so, making sure she got it pulled tight, and without any fear or the slightest hesitation she hoisted herself over the balcony, beginning the climb down the rope. Although impressed, Mal was most definitely hovering around below Evie with her arms outstretched, just in case. The rope didn't quite reach all the way to the ground, so Evie simply had to let go and—for the third time in her life—land in a crumpled heap on top of Mal.  
  
"Hi!" Evie happily greeted.  
  
"Hey," Mal groaned, arm already trained to shove Evie off of her.  
  
"What are you doing here?" Evie asked, getting to her feet.  
  
"Rescuing you, dummy. We've got plotting to do."  
  
Mal was already off walking, and Evie was close behind.  
  
"How'd you get out so late?" Evie wondered.  
  
"Walked out, duh."  
  
"Your mom lets you leave when it's dark?"  
  
"No, I'm just not very good at doing what I'm supposed to do."  
  
Evie gasped.  
  
"You  _snuck_ out!" she realized.  
  
"Yeah, so? You did too."  
  
Evie gasped again. Mal rolled her eyes.  
  
The Isle was a lot emptier at night than Evie expected, at least this part of it was. The busy streets Scar had chased them down days ago were now decidedly more quiet and abandoned. Evie liked the thought of her and Mal having them all to themselves.  
  
"What are we gonna plot all the way out here?" Evie questioned.  
  
Mal stopped, taking a good look around at the grim scenery under the dull Isle streetlamps.  
  
"This one isn't plotting, it's training."  
  
Evie tilted her head.  
  
"I thought you called it plotting?"   
  
"Sometimes I call it training, get over it."  
  
In one quick movement Mal slunk behind her and put her hands over Evie's eyes.  
  
"What are you doing?" Evie innocently asked.  
  
"Close your eyes."  
  
Mal felt the brush of lashes against her palm and knew that Evie had done so.  
  
"You're gonna count, and I'm gonna hide. When you get to twenty, you have to try and find me," Mal said. "Alright?"  
  
"Alright."  
  
So Evie counted. Mal hid. When Evie opened her eyes it was tough going searching for Mal in the dimly lit streets; she imagined she'd have a hard enough time trying to find her in broad daylight. When she eventually discovered her ducked behind a trash can, then it was Evie's turn. Back and forth they went, hiding and seeking, until Mal stumped her on what turned out to be their final round and declared herself the winner. Evie figured that was the end of their playtime, but when Mal scrounged up a rusty old can and overturned two empty wooden crates on opposite sides of the street, Evie discovered that Mal had so many ways to make her own fun.  
  
Evie would be in so much trouble if her mother found her like this, running through the streets,  _exerting_ herself. She couldn't even imagine the punishment waiting for her should her mom catch her, but it really didn't matter. She was having too much fun. Her laughter mixed with Mal's as they raced up and down the road, kicking that rusty can along and trying to shoot it into each other's crates. At one point Mal stuck her foot out a bit too far to intercept and tripped Evie up, sending her tumbling to the ground.  
  
"E! Are you okay??" Mal gasped, dropping to her knees beside Evie.  
  
"I'm fine," Evie giggled, a little winded but not lying.  
  
"...You're a mess," Mal sighed, helping Evie to her feet. "How come you're always laughing?"  
  
"How come you're not?"  
  
"Because I'm evil."  
  
Evie stood still as Mal brushed bits of gravel off her.  
  
"Well you're not very good at it," she noted.  
  
"It takes practice," Mal pouted in her defense. "Years and years of it. My mom says so. I'll get there one day."  
  
Evie pondered that for a moment.  
  
"I don't think evil people can have friends," she said.  
  
"So?" Mal scowled at her.  
  
"So where does that leave you and me? Years and years from now?"  
  
Mal had a vehement denial that there wouldn’t be a “Mal and Evie” years and years from now ready and waiting, but she couldn't bring it forth.  
  
"Villains don't have friends, but they have accomplices. We can be accomplices," she said.  
  
Evie's face lit up.  
  
"Really?"  
  
"Yeah, whatever. Why not," Mal shrugged it off, then looked up at the clouded black sky. "Well, come on, you'd better get home."  
  
Evie shook her head, and planted her feet firmly on the ground.  
  
"I want to play some more. Or plot, or train, or whatever you want to call it."  
  
Mal raised an eyebrow, and pointed a finger in the direction of Evie's castle.  
  
"But it's late, and you shouldn't be out. What if the Evil Queen comes looking for you and you aren't there?" Mal questioned.  
  
"My mom won't look for me. She knows I'm locked in my room, so she knows that's where I'll stay," Evie said.  
  
"But you didn't."  
  
A sly smile crossed Evie's lips.  
  
"Then maybe I'm not very good at doing what I'm supposed to do either," she grinned.  
  
Mal was impressed. Very, very impressed.  
  
"Besides," Evie went on with a shrug. "If I get caught, then it's just more punishment, so I might as well stay out here and enjoy it for as long as I can."  
  
"...Makes sense."  
  
"Mhm. So..." Evie nodded at the banner heralding the presence of a closed down shop off in the distance, then hunkered down low to the ground, pressing her palms flat against the concrete. "Race you."  
  
Mal cracked her knuckles with a smirk and did the same, crouching down beside Evie. The whole street, the whole night, the whole  _Isle_  was ahead of them. And Mal came to win. She couldn't let her new accomplice show her up. No way.  
  
"...You're on."  
  
And off they went, side by side into the night. A villain and her new accomplice.  
  
A princess and her new friend.


End file.
